My Sister's Song Read Free Page A

dripping honey comb strategically
peaking out of the top of a ceramic jar. I pretended not to see
them, or hear them (rabbit thumpers that they were) as I passed
quite near. They set a scout to follow me, believing I would lead
them to the village unsuspecting. Instead, I lead him to an
enormous pile of honey. All the honey we could find from the many
hives we knew of and a few new ones. Every Charmer in our village
was hoarse from singing, even Arite. Every beehive in the forest
was deprived of its loot. The honey, slightly watery and reddish,
had tingled our palms as we collected it. Now it sat, inviting and
innocent, before me. The Roman scout who followed let forth a glad
cry at the sight. I pretended startlement and was quickly bound,
gagged, and tumbled aside. He ran to collect his comrades and the
whole swarm, I counted ninety now, descended upon the honey. They
ate it greedily, apparently unused to such wealth. Licking it off
of fingers, hands, and each other. They were too eager to notice
the slightly acidic taste.
    It took nearly an hour for
the toxins to take effect. By then they were almost upon the
village. Our twelve remaining warriors stood at the front of the
village and watched them come. The porcupine of enemy warriors
seemed undefeatable, until it began to wobble.
    I knew how the Romans felt.
First a strange tingling sensation all over, then an empty dizzy
feeling in the head and that horrible sickness in the stomach. Then
the loss of hands and feet, limbs that would not obey commands -
like unruly children. They looked quite drunk, all ninety of them,
stumbling toward the village. The porcupine wiggled, weaving side
to side. Bits kept falling out, meandering aside on their own. The
watchers in the village began to laugh, almost hysterically, at the
approaching menace. The Romans’ spears carved arches through the
air, so that it looked as though the porcupine were shivering its
quills. It began to loose momentum. Some of the Romans fell to the
ground. Apparently, not one Roman of the group disliked the taste
of honey, all had eaten a mouthful or two. A few made it to the
waiting warriors, but sick as they were, they were easily killed.
The rest collapsed, breathing slowly, stiff as boards or jerking
slightly. They lay before our village, stretched out, the tassels
on their helmets waving softly. Some died from their
overindulgence. Most we stabbed, quickly and painlessly. By that
time, stomachs cramped, loosing their mid-day meal on the grass,
feeling as though they were being clawed from the inside, our
knives were like a blessing. A release from the whirling lights,
the grueling sickness. Even from my small dose I remembered seeking
death.
    Of course, the real problem
was then disposing of ninety bodies. Our warrior survivors from the
first battle arrived that evening, in time to help us strip the
Romans of their armor and their strange weaponry. Their chain-mail
and their clothing would prove useful in trade. We eventually
decided to drag them to a meadow where we burned as much of them as
we could and buried the rest.
    I was given my own scout
group. Arite made a song about the battle, and every spring we
began to collect the poison honey – and not just for the Melissai
to dream with.
     
    The Romans
named it meli
maenomenon , mad honey. My people used it
to kill three squadrons over the next eight summers. Each time they
marched toward our sea they could not resist the honey laid before
them, and its golden sweetness inevitably lured them into death. So
the Heptakometes kept the Inner Sea from the yearning maw of Rome
and her allies for all the time of that great Empire.
     
     

 
     
    The End
     

 
    Acknowledgments

    I was inspired to write this
story by an article entitled Mad Honey by Adrienne Mayor,
published in a 1995 issue of Archaeology magazine (Vol. 46,
Num. 6).

Author’s Note

    This story is loosely based on
historical fact. Tribes around the Black Sea did repel Roman troops
using